WATCHING FAKE NEWS BEING MADE IN REAL TIME: Reuters, CBS Run With Misleading Headline About Migrant Mother, Mexican Border Guard.
Both CBS and Reuters ran a photo of a Guatemalan migrant mother and a Mexican border guard, including a headline that didn’t quite tell the whole story.
Reuters published the photo with the headline, “Reuters photo captures Guatemalan mother begging soldier to let her enter US.”
CBS ran a very similar headline with the Reuters photo, which was taken by photographer Jose Luis Gonzalez last Monday. “Dramatic photo captures migrant mom pleading with border guard as she tries to enter US with son,” the headline read.
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Nine paragraphs into the story, however, Reuters shed further light on the context of the situation by including comments from the National Guard and Jesus Ramirez, spokesman for Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador.
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Following the confrontation, Perez and her son were photographed moving toward the border in order to cross illegally, unhindered by the guard.
And Reuters are still issuing misleadingly labeled photos today. While this shot, unlike the carefully cropped photo mentioned above, includes the Mexican border guardsman’s uniform ID (at least you can now see there’s no US flag on his sleeve), there’s no information in the caption that describes the country he works for:
To be fair, this is far from the worst bit of fake photo journalism ever run under Reuters’ imprimatur — but it is par for the course from the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” wire service.